Police-recorded religious hate crime up by 25% after Israel-Hamas conflict

The most common hate crimes targeted against Jewish and Muslim people were public fear, alarm or distress offences.

Police-recorded hate crime against Jewish people more than doubled in the year to March (Jordan Pettitt/PA) (PA Archive)

Police-recorded religious hate crime in England and Wales was up by a quarter over the past year, driven by a rise in offences against Jews and Muslims since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict, official figures show.

Hate crimes targeted at Jewish people more than doubled while incidents against Muslims were up 13% on the previous 12 months, according to Home Office data.

There were a total of 10,484 religious hate crime offences recorded by police in the year to March, up 25% from 8,370 the previous year.

The department said this is the highest annual count in these offences since the hate crime collection began in the year ending March 2012.

Publishing the statistics on Thursday, the Home Office said the 25% increase “was driven by a rise in hate crimes against Jewish people and to a lesser extent Muslims and has occurred since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict”.

In the 12 months to March 2024 there were 3,282 religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people, which was more than double the 1,543 recorded the previous year.

Offences against Jewish people accounted for a third (33%) of all religious hate crimes in the last year, up from a fifth the previous year.

There were 3,866 religious hate crimes targeted against Muslims in the latest year, up 13% from 3,432 recorded the previous year.

Such crimes against Muslims accounted for almost two in five (38%) of all religious hate crimes in that period.

Offences spiked immediately after the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7 2023, and the most common hate crimes targeted against people from the two faiths were public fear, alarm or distress offences.

More recent figures, recorded by community organisations rather than police, have shown record highs in antisemitism and Islamophobia up to the end of September.

Jewish charity the Community Security Trust (CST) said the 5,583 incidents recorded across the UK between October 7 2023 and September 30 is the highest total of any 12-month period and was three times that of the previous 12-month period, which saw 1,830 incidents recorded.

Tell Mama said it had recorded 4,971 incidents of anti-Muslim hate and discrimination across the UK in the year since the October 7 attacks, the highest total it had noted in more than a decade.

Meanwhile, the latest Home Office figures showed falls in other types of police-recorded hate crime in England and Wales.

Such crimes against people based on their sexual orientation fell by 8%, to 22,839, in the year to March, from 24,777 in the previous 12 months.

Disability hate crimes were down by almost a fifth (18%), to 11,719 from 14,285, while hate crimes against transgender people were down by 2% to 4,780 from 4,889.

Race hate crimes still accounted for the majority of police-recorded hate crimes, as with previous years.

There were 98,799 offences in the year to March, down 5% from the previous year when there were 103,625 such crimes recorded by police.

Race hate crime offences peaked at 109,843 offences in the year ending March 2022, with the latest figure representing a fall of 10% from that high, the Home Office said.